Download or read book Resistance Heroism and the End of Empire written by Keren Chiaroni and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces an English-speaking public to the life of Madeleine Riffaud – one of the last living leaders of the French Resistance. It considers the nature of the rebel hero in France’s founding historical narratives (revolution, insurrection, resistance) while asking what contributions such a hero might make to debates on national identity today. Through a series of narrative close-ups, the book offers perspectives on major chapters in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French history through the eyes of activists who experienced them: the Revolution of July 1830 and the 1851 insurrection against Napoleon, as experienced by Riffaud’s ancestor Edme Liron, and the French Resistance, the Vietnam War and French–Algerian conflict as experienced by Riffaud herself. The book aims to explore the kinds of choices individuals face when their beliefs set them at odds with the state, and to suggest that there is a place for individual action in a global arena where state boundaries are becoming increasingly less relevant.

Download or read book Hero of the Empire written by Candice Millard and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2017-05-30 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Destiny of the Republic, this thrilling biographical account of the life and legacy of Wintson Churchill is a "nail-biter and top-notch character study rolled into one" (The New York Times). At the age of twenty-four, Winston Churchill was utterly convinced it was his destiny to become prime minister of England. He arrived in South Africa in 1899, valet and crates of vintage wine in tow, to cover the brutal colonial war the British were fighting with Boer rebels and jumpstart his political career. But just two weeks later, Churchill was taken prisoner. Remarkably, he pulled off a daring escape—traversing hundreds of miles of enemy territory, alone, with nothing but a crumpled wad of cash, four slabs of chocolate, and his wits to guide him. Bestselling author Candice Millard spins an epic story of bravery, savagery, and chance encounters with a cast of historical characters—including Rudyard Kipling, Lord Kitchener, and Mohandas Gandhi—with whom Churchill would later share the world stage. But Hero of the Empire is more than an extraordinary adventure story, for the lessons Churchill took from the Boer War would profoundly affect twentieth century history.

Download or read book Children Against Hitler written by Monica Porter and published by Pen and Sword History. This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Readers of all generations have grown up on The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier’s best-selling tale of children under wartime occupation, but few know the real life stories of the children and teenagers who went further and actually stood up to the Nazis. Here, for the first time, Monica Porter gathers together their stories from many corners of occupied Europe, showing how in a variety of audacious and inventive ways children as young as six resisted the Nazi menace, risking and sometimes even sacrificing their brief lives in the process: a heroism that until now has largely gone unsung. These courageous youngsters came from all classes and backgrounds. There were high school drop-outs and social misfits, brainy bookworms, the children of farmers and factory workers. Some lost their entire families to the war, yet fought on alone. Often more adept and fearless at resistance than adults, they exuded an air of guilessness and could slip more easily under the Nazi radar. But as nets tightened, many were captured, tortured or imprisoned, some paying the highest price – a life cut short by execution before they had even turned eighteen. These children were motivated by different ideals; patriotism, political conviction, their Christian beliefs, or revulsion at the brutality of the Third Reich. But what united them was their determination to strike back at an enemy which had deprived them of their freedom, their dignity - and their childhood.

Download or read book Paris 44 written by Patrick Bishop and published by Signal. This book was released on 2024-07-09 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrating the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Paris, a heart-stopping countdown narrative recreating the liberation of Paris in 1944, one of the great hinge moments of WW2. The fall of Paris to the Nazis in June 1940 seemed like the darkest day of the Second World War; and the liberation of the city in August 1944 felt like the brightest. The liberation was a hinge moment of immense significance for the twentieth century, heralding the final victory of light over darkness and opening the door to a future free from fear. It was also the party of the century: champagne flowed freely, total strangers embraced - it was a celebration of life renewed against the backdrop of the world's favourite city, seen in by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Lee Miller, JD Salinger, Picasso, and Robert Capa. This happy ending has come to feel as if it was pre-ordained. But there was nothing inevitable about it. Had things gone differently Paris might have gone down as a ghastly monument to Nazi nihilism, reduced to a rubble-strewn graveyard. This book, timed for the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Paris, tells the story of those iridescent days in a startling new way. In a countdown narrative, packed with drama, heroism, joy—and heart-thumping suspense—the City of Lights' fate hangs in the balance.

Download or read book Decolonising Imperial Heroes written by Max Jones and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The heroes of the British and French empires stood at the vanguard of the vibrant cultures of imperialism that emerged in Europe in the second-half of the nineteenth century. Their stories are well known. Scholars have tended to assume that figures such as Livingstone and Gordon, or Marchand and Brazza, vanished rapidly at the end of empire. Yet imperial heroes did not disappear after 1945, as British and French flags were lowered around the world. On the contrary, their reputations underwent a variety of metamorphoses in both the former metropoles and the former colonies. This book develops a framework to understand the complex legacies of decolonisation, both political and cultural, through the case study of imperial heroes. We demonstrate that the ‘decolonisation’ of imperial heroes was a much more complex and protracted process than the political retreat from empire, and that it is still an ongoing phenomenon, even half a century after the world has ceased to be ‘painted in red’. Whilst Decolonising Imperial Heroes explores the appeal of the explorers, humanitarians and missionaries whose stories could be told without reference to violence against colonized peoples, it also analyses the persistence of imperial heroes as sites of political dispute in the former metropoles. Demonstrating that the work of remembrance was increasingly carried out by diverse, fragmented groups of non-state actors, in a process we call ‘the privatisation of heroes’, the book reveals the surprising rejuvenation of imperial heroes in former colonies, both in nation-building narratives and as heritage sites. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History.

Download or read book Divided Village The Cold War in the German Borderlands written by Jason B. Johnson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-18 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1983, then-US Vice President George H.W. Bush delivered a speech in London. He had just been in West Berlin and spoke about his first visit to the Berlin Wall. Bush then went on to describe another German wall he saw after Berlin: "if anything, that wall was an even greater obscenity than its eponym to the north." The story of that wall is a fascinating and valuable slice of the history of post-war Europe. That wall had gone up nearly two hundred miles southwest of Berlin at the edge of divided Germany, in the tiny, remote farming village of Mödlareuth. For nearly half the twentieth century, the Iron Curtain divided Mödlareuth in two. In this little valley surrounded by forests and fields, the villagers of Mödlareuth found themselves on the literal front-line of the Cold War. The East German state gradually militarized the border through the community while eastern villagers exhibited a range of responses to cope with their changing circumstances, reflective of the variable nature of the Cold War border through Germany: along the Iron Curtain, the size and isolation of the divided place influenced the local character of the division.

Download or read book Oil Exploration Diplomacy and Security in the Early Cold War written by Roberto Cantoni and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The importance of oil for national military-industrial complexes appeared more clearly than ever in the Cold War. This volume argues that the confidential acquisition of geoscientific knowledge was paramount for states, not only to provide for their own energy needs, but also to buttress national economic and geostrategic interests and protect energy security. By investigating the postwar rebuilding and expansion of French and Italian oil industries from the second half of the 1940s to the early 1960s, this book shows how successive administrations in those countries devised strategies of oil exploration and transport, aiming at achieving a higher degree of energy autonomy and setting up powerful oil agencies that could implement those strategies. However, both within and outside their national territories, these two European countries had to confront the new Cold War balances and the interests of the two superpowers.

Download or read book Propaganda Persuasion and the Great War written by Pier Paolo Pedrini and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-07 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to persuade citizens to enlist? How to convince them to fight in a war which was, for many, distant in terms of kilometres as well as interest? Modern persuasion techniques, both political and commercial, were used to motivate enlistment and financial support to build a "factory of consensus". The propagandists manipulated the public, guiding their thoughts and actions according to the wishes of those in power and were therefore the forerunners of spin doctors and marketing and advertising professionals. Their posters caught the attention of members of the public with images of children and beautiful women, involving them, nourishing their inner needs for well-being and social prestige, motivating them by showing them testimonials in amusing and adventurous situations, and inspiring their way of perceiving the enemy and the war itself, whose objective was to "make the world safe for democracy". In the discourse of this strategy we find storytelling, humour, satire and fear, but also the language of gestures, recognized as important for the completeness of messages. Were the propagandists "hidden persuaders" who knew the characteristics of the human mind? We do not know for certain. However, their posters have a personal and consistent motivation which this book intends to demonstrate.

Download or read book The Age of Anniversaries written by T. G. Otte and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-28 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For historians centennial commemorations furnish an excellent heuristic tool for gauging late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century attitudes towards the past and the present. Centenary celebrations helped to revive, perpetuate and reinforce public perceptions of historical events and people in collective memory. They were fairly infrequent before 1850 but increased in size and numbers by the end of the long nineteenth century, so much so that a ‘cult of the centenary’ had become established throughout the wider Western world around 1900. At one level, such events were ephemeral affairs. And yet many left a lasting legacy. Above all, as part of the contemporary processes of the ‘invention of traditions’ and the conscious national ‘self-historicization’ of the established nation-states, they offer crucial insights into the social, cultural and political dynamics of the period.

Download or read book Green Landscapes in the European City 1750 2010 written by Peter Clark and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of illustrations -- Notes on contributors -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Introduction -- City trends -- 2 Vegetation and green spaces in Paris: a spatial approach -- 3 London's green spaces in the late twentieth century: the rise and decline of municipal policies -- 4 Outdoor recreation and green space in Helsinki and Dublin, c. 1965-1985: a transnational comparison -- Varieties of green space -- 5 Impacts of residential infilling on private gardens in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area -- 6 The right to the garden: allotments and the politics of urban green space in Sweden -- 7 Green space in socialist and post-socialist Zagreb -- 8 'In Antwerp, the birds cough in the morning': green space activism in a time of urban flight: the case of post-war Antwerp -- Interactions -- 9 The urban politics of nature: two centuries of green spaces in Berlin, 1800-2014 -- 10 Immigrants and green space in the Helsinki region -- 11 Women landscape planners and green space: Sweden, 1930-1970 -- 12 Urban green space in a globalising world -- 13 Epilogue: how green is your city? Transnational and local perspectives on urban green spaces -- Index

Download or read book The Summer Capitals of Europe 1814 1919 written by Marina Soroka and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of figures -- Acknowledgements -- List of abbreviations -- Introduction -- PART I: Spa life -- 1 Shrines-springs-spas -- 2 Therapy versus pleasure -- 3 Spa society -- 4 Making money out of pleasure -- PART II: Business of Europe -- 5 Royalty at spas -- 6 Era of congresses -- 7 Looking after Europe -- 8 Secret diplomacy -- 9 Puppets and puppeteers: Summer of 1870 in Ems -- 10 Bismarck's cures -- 11 Rapprochements -- 12 The flight from spas and the end of an era: 1914-1919 -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index

Download or read book German Reunification written by Joyce E. Bromley and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-04-07 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1945, German families with more than 100 hectares (247 acres) of land were forced from their homes in the eastern sector by the Soviets, now in control of that area. These families were brutally evicted from their property and had their land expropriated. In the next 45 years, the GDR government would come to control all of the agricultural land. At reunification in 1990, the earlier abuse of these farmers was compounded when the German government would not restore any of this expropriated land to these families. The German government falsely accused the Soviet Union of insisting on non-restitution as a condition of reunification. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev unequivocally denies this claim and insists that land issues are a German problem to resolve. The temporary land-trust agency, established by the German government in 1990 to dispose of land it inherited from the GDR, continues to exist. After 25 years, this agency still holds almost 20 percent of this expropriated land. Its agents, most of whom were reared in GDR, decide who may (or may not) lease land, the conditions of the lease, and if and when a farmer may buy land – circumstances that remain deeply controversial. Joyce Bromley draws on extensive field research, and previously untapped sources, to explore the reliability of the government’s version of these important events. Is the German government once again, without shame, discriminating against a group of its own citizens?

Download or read book The History of the European Migration Regime written by Emmanuel Comte and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-23 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Second World War, the international migration regime in Europe took a course different from the global migration regime and the migration regimes in other regions of the world. Cumbersome and arbitrary administrative practices prevailed in the late 1940s in most parts of Europe. The gradual implementation of regulations for the free movement of people within the European Community, European citizenship, and the internal and external dimensions of the Schengen agreements profoundly transformed the European migration regime. These instruments produced a regional regime in Europe with an unparalleled degree of intraregional openness and an unparalleled degree of closure towards migrants from outside Europe. This book relies on national and international archives to explain how German strategies during the Cold War shaped the openness of that original regime. This migration regime helped Germany to create a stable international order in Western Europe after the war, conducive to German Reunification and supported German economic expansion. The book embraces the whole period of development of this regime, from 1947 through 1992. It deals with all types of migrants between and towards European countries: unskilled labourers, skilled professionals, self-employed workers, and migrant workers’ family members, examining both their access to economic activity and their social and political rights.

Download or read book Order and Insecurity in Germany and Turkey written by Emre Sencer and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-11-25 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines processes of military, political and cultural transformation from the perspective of officers in two countries: Germany and Turkey in the 1930s. The national fates of both countries interlocked during the Great War years and their close alliance dictated their joint defeat in 1918. While the two countries were manifestly different in their politics and culture, both had lost the war and both went through powerful changes in its immediate aftermath. They painted themselves as the victims of a new imperialist order, whose chief representatives were Britain and France. The result was a radical militarism that unleashed violent currents in these countries – developments that were to be more transformative than the impact of the war experience itself.

Download or read book Heroism and the Changing Character of War written by S. Scheipers and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Post-heroism is often perceived as one of the main aspects of change in the character of war, a phenomenon prevalent in western societies. According to this view, demographic and cultural changes in the west have severely decreased the tolerance for casualties in war. This edited volume provides a critical examination of this idea.

Download or read book Resistance Rebellion and Death written by Albert Camus and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • Twenty-three political essays that focus on the victims of history, from the fallen maquis of the French Resistance to the casualties of the Cold War. In the speech he gave upon accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, Albert Camus said that a writer "cannot serve today those who make history; he must serve those who are subject to it." Resistance, Rebellion and Death displays Camus' rigorous moral intelligence addressing issues that range from colonial warfare in Algeria to the social cancer of capital punishment. But this stirring book is above all a reflection on the problem of freedom, and, as such, belongs in the same tradition as the works that gave Camus his reputation as the conscience of our century: The Stranger, The Rebel, and The Myth of Sisyphus.

Download or read book Star Wars and the Hero s Journey written by Valerie Estelle Frankel and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The original Star Wars trilogy famously follows Joseph Campbell's model for the hero's journey, making Luke Skywalker's story the new hero quest for a modern age. With the nine-plus film saga complete, however, new story patterns have emerged as the hero's journey is imagined over and over for characters of different ages, genders, and backgrounds. The prequels offer the plot arc of the villain's journey through Anakin. Leia and Padme, while damsels in the men's story, break out to undergo their own ordeals. The heroine's journey is exemplified by Rey and Jyn. Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Vader must accept the loss of power and fade into spirit guardians, perpetuating the lifecycle. By the sequel era, the original trio become mentors to the younger generation and finally must do the same. Meanwhile, the Mandalorian explores a different form of the quest as he transforms from immature warrior to patriarch. This book tracks the journeys of over 20 characters throughout the franchise.